"Elden Law Ring" has been more than a year from the official release date of February 25, 2022, this year "Elden Law Ring" shipped more than 2 million copies, won many awards and awards, in addition to the huge boom set off when it was just released, the game team of "Elden Law Ring" also continued to update and improve the game, and launched a free DLC "Arena" on December 7, and the game story setting also has a lot of places worth discussing, so it still has quite a good popularity, for "Elden Law Ring" The call for the launch of DLC has never stopped, and from time to time there are rumors that "Elden Law Ring" is suspected of launching DLC.
On July 13, 2022, the internal system of "Bandai Namco", the publisher of "Elden Law Ring", was hacked, and then the name of the game claimed to be Bandai Namco was going to release was circulated on the Internet, including the DLC of "Elden Law Ring", but it was later confirmed to be fake news (source: Game Corner)
On January 25, 2023, a post from the Reddit forum said that many details related to the games and projects of "FromSoftware" developer "Elden Law Ring" had been revealed in advance, and Lance McDonald, a well-known overseas data Miner master, mentioned in a discussion on the Discord channel that FromSoftware has begun to develop a large DLC for "Elden Law Ring". While he doesn't know if the DLC will add new gameplay mechanics to the game, he can be sure it's a massive DLC.
Almost a month later, on February 28, 2023, FromSoftware announced that they were working on Elden's first large-scale DLC, "Shadow of the Erdtree", and released a concept art.
(來源：Elden Ring：Shadow of the Erdtree)
In the concept art art, you can see a place full of golden reeds, the location characteristics are similar to the "Atan Plateau" in "Elden Law Ring", and the area full of fog, lifeless and different dilapidated buildings coincides with the "ruins of the forest people" adjacent to the Atan Plateau.
The Artan Plateau is the closest place to the golden tree, you can see the original appearance and light of the golden tree when you raise your head, and it is also the location of the royal city and the nobility, and the concept art picture has a dead tree, but faintly emits a close light like "Elden Law Ring", the golden tree in the different endings of "Elden Law Ring" are inevitably declining or even destroyed, so the image of the big tree in the concept art picture is similar to the image of the golden tree in the later period of "Elden Law Ring";
In Elden Law Ring, becoming eclipsed is already the best ending for the Golden Tree (Source: Elden Ring)
There is a two-horned horse in the golden reed, and only one horse in "Elden Law Ring" is two-horned - that is, the spirit horse "Torret" who takes it from Melina and accompanies the protagonist on the road of mission. Riding Torrett is a man with long flowing golden hair, a fair complexion, wearing a white robe, and an unknown appearance, and his appearance is similar to the character "Mikaela", who is constantly mentioned in "Elden Law Ring" and plays an important role but may only appear twice.
Mikaela picked up by the "Blood Monarch" with one hand (Source: Elden Ring)
The story of "Elden Law Ring" tells that after the "Elden Law Ring" was broken by the eternal queen "Malika", the blessing of the golden tree turned into a curse, Marika was imprisoned by the beast of Elden, and the king of Elden "Radagan" disappeared at the same time - and in fact, Radagon is a community of alien spirits that Marika almost no one knows, so their descendants, the golden family and demigods, are leaderless, and they kill each other for their own purposes, causing the land of the golden tree to be destroyed. In the end, the demigods scattered their things, holding the magic ring fragment "Great Lune" they owned, or prepared to abandon their demigod identity and wait for their fate.
Mikaela is the son of Marika and Radagan, one of the demigods, and he and his twin sister "Marlenia" are the product of Marika's "herself" and are born crippled, Mikaela is forever young, and Marlenia is corrupted. Mikaela once studied one of the teachings of the Golden Tree "Golden Law Fundamentalism" from her father Radagan, hoping that it could save Marlenia from corruption, but her father's answer made Mikaela understand that fundamentalism could not save her sister, so she found another way.
(Source: Elden Ring)
Mikaela sets out to cultivate her own "Golden Tree", the "Holy Tree", and in order to achieve this goal, Marlenia needs to become the most powerful force of the forever young Mikaela, so Marlenia becomes an invincible Valkyrie. In order to undo Marlenia's corruption, Mikaela prepared a golden needle that was only one step away from eliminating corruption and developed the power of the Holy Tree, but unfortunately only one step away - in the Shattered War, Marlenia tied with the "Broken Star" Ratana, was seriously injured and unconscious, and was sent to the Holy Tree to recuperate; Mikaela is taken away by the "Blood King" Monge, who is obsessed with him, and is expected by the latter to become a "god" and become a "king" himself.
Monger, the Blood King (Source: Elden Ring)
Defeating the Blood King Monge and reaching the Land of the Holy Tree are not necessary stages of the main story, so players may not have seen the story and follow-up of the two places, but players who decide to go to the Blood Dynasty to defeat Monge, will come to the location of Monger's throne "God-Man Sleeping Cocoon", and see Mikaela "irrigated" by Monge with blood and sleep in the cocoon.
The youtuber "BonfireVN", which has various in-depth analysis of soul games, disassembles Mikaela's cocoon, and at the end the player will see a naked weirdo with a bald head and long body, which is very different from Mikaela's previous image.
(Source: Bonfire VN/Elden Ring)
Whether the person in the concept art is Mikaela or not, and what story "Shadow of the Golden Tree" will bring us, it remains to be released, but if the expansion pack is indeed related to Mikaela, I believe it will solve some mysteries for the confusing "Elden Law Ring" story.
(Source: Organize pictures from the Internet)
Friends who want to hear the story are welcome to follow, comment and like